388 MAIDEN CASTLE
moth ram. The little autocrat of Beulah Lodge hadn't scrupled
to badger him about his clothes, too, but here he proved in-
corrigible.
"If she takes away his jersey," D. told Wizzie one night by
their upper-room fire: "he'll go dotty, just as I would if you
took away my stick."
All the first week of October it rained incessantly; but the
heaviest rain Wizzie had ever known in her life was the rain
that swept down the panes of Claudius's room when she and D.
went in to see him on the afternoon of the eleventh.
Claudius confessed to them he had been worse in the night.
He told them he had had a violent shivering fit just before
dawn and had tried to reach his fire, which the district nurse
had made up in the hope that it might last till she came back
in the morning,
"She rated me well, you may believe/' he told them: "when
she did come. She wouldn't have known about it though if
Katie and Edith hadn't looked in on their way to work,"
"Known about what?" inquired Wizzie anxiously. "You
don't mean to say you couldn't get back to bed?"
Claudius worked himself up a bit higher on his pillows and
chuckled. "Fm right as a trivet now," he said. "I'm far better
than yesterday afternoon* Look at the rain! Listen to it." He
was silent for a moment watching the streaming pane. Then,
with a change of expression: "She doesn't know about last
night, does she?"
"We don't know about last night," cried Wizzie, very much
perturbed. "Did your Katies and Ediths find you out of bed?"
He surveyed her troubled face with a look of childish satis-
faction. "How kind you are!" he murmured, stretching out
his arm and touching her sleeve. Then drawing his hand back,
he sighed heavily.
"No-man, my friend," he said: "this business must end well
this time"—the rest of the sentence came slowly and emphati-
cally—"for It wouldn't do for me to kick the bucket till she
came round."
"But you are better to-day," said Wizzie gravely. "Your face
shows it. Did the nurse let you have that stuff that I made D.
buy at Boon's?"
But the man closed his eyes with a worried frown. His child-
ish pleasure in frightening her about "last night" changed to